By John Engles
Never in all my days on this stream
have I taken a trout from this pool
under the black willow - a good place
for big fish, the current deeply undercutting
the bank, a good cover of foam
on the eddy, caddis always, shifting
schools of dace. Still, one a year

I wade the riffle at its head, move
into the shades of the clay bank
and fish the run - a nymph
to an expected hatch, though nothing
has ever come of it, nor of a dun
cocked prettily in the drift line. Today,
the same. I lie in the sand

by the oxbow and watch, imagining how
one day my fly might ride
true in the feeding lane, and in a shimmer of spray
the river will burst and I'll be staring
into the ravenous power
I've always know
to be holding there. I know

of other spots like this one, where
in some fluid congress of the general dark
something heavy takes
secret breath, by reason of
its sheer bulk wary, and at pains
to conceal the breaking
of surfaces. Here lies in wait
what feeds by night, but only then. ~ John Engles

Excerpt from: Big Water Published by Lyons & Burford, New York, NY
We thank Nick Lyons for use permission!

About John Engels

John Engels has taught English Literature at
St. Michaels's College in Winooski, Vermont for many years. He
is the author of five books of poetry, including The Homer
Mitchell Place, Vivaldi in Early Fall, and Weather-Fear, for
which he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is recognized
as one of America's finest poets. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.